We arrived at Wrangell July 14, and after a short stop of a few hours
went on to Sitka and returned on the 20th to Wrangell, the most
inhospitable place at first sight I had ever seen. The little steamer
that had been my home in the wonderful trip through the archipelago,
after taking the mail, departed on her return to Portland, and as I
watched her gliding out of sight in the dismal blurring rain, I felt
strangely lonesome. The friend that had accompanied me thus far now
left for his home in San Francisco, with two other interesting
travelers who had made the trip for health and scenery, while my fellow
passengers, the missionaries, went direct to the Presbyterian home in
the old fort. There was nothing like a tavern or lodging-house in the
village, nor could I find any place in the stumpy, rocky, boggy ground
about it that looked dry enough to camp on until I could find a way
into the wilderness to begin my studies. Every place within a mile or
two of the town seemed strangely shelterless and inhospitable, for all
the trees had long ago been felled for building-timber and firewood. At
the worst, I thought, I could build a bark hut on a hill back of the
village, where something like a forest loomed dimly through the
draggled clouds.
I had already seen some of the high glacier-bearing mountains in
distant views from the steamer, and was anxious to reach them. A few
whites of the village, with whom I entered into conversation, warned me
that the Indians were a bad lot, not to be trusted, that the woods were
well-nigh impenetrable, and that I could go nowhere without a canoe. On
the other hand, these natural difficulties made the grand wild country
all the more attractive, and I determined to get into the heart of it
somehow or other with a bag of hardtack, trusting to my usual good
luck. My present difficulty was in finding a first base camp. My only
hope was on the hill. When I was strolling past the old fort I happened
to meet one of the missionaries, who kindly asked me where I was going
to take up my quarters.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I have not been able to find quarters of
any sort. The top of that little hill over there seems the only
possible place.”
He then explained that every room in the mission house was full, but he
thought I might obtain leave to spread my blanket in a carpenter-shop
belonging to the mission. Thanking him, I ran down to the sloppy wharf
for my little bundle of baggage, laid it on the shop floor, and felt
glad and snug among the dry, sweet-smelling shavings.
The carpenter was at work on a new Presbyterian mission building, and
when he came in I explained that Dr. Jackson[1] had suggested that I
might be allowed to sleep on the floor, and after I assured him that I
would not touch his tools or be in his way, he goodnaturedly gave me
the freedom of the shop and also of his small private side room where I
would find a wash-basin.
I was here only one night, however, for Mr. Vanderbilt, a merchant, who
with his family occupied the best house in the fort, hearing that one
of the late arrivals, whose business none seemed to know, was compelled
to sleep in the carpenter-shop, paid me a good-Samaritan visit and
after a few explanatory words on my glacier and forest studies, with
fine hospitality offered me a room and a place at his table. Here I
found a real home, with freedom to go on all sorts of excursions as
opportunity offered. Annie Vanderbilt, a little doctor of divinity two
years old, ruled the household with love sermons and kept it warm.
Mr. Vanderbilt introduced me to prospectors and traders and some of the
most influential of the Indians. I visited the mission school and the
home for Indian girls kept by Mrs. MacFarland, and made short
excursions to the nearby forests and streams, and studied the rate of
growth of the different species of trees and their age, counting the
annual rings on stumps in the large clearings made by the military when
the fort was occupied, causing wondering speculation among the Wrangell
folk, as was reported by Mr. Vanderbilt.
“What can the fellow be up to?” they inquired. “He seems to spend most
of his time among stumps and weeds. I saw him the other day on his
knees, looking at a stump as if he expected to find gold in it. He
seems to have no serious object whatever.”
One night when a heavy rainstorm was blowing I unwittingly caused a lot
of wondering excitement among the whites as well as the superstitious
Indians. Being anxious to see how the Alaska trees behave in storms and
hear the songs they sing, I stole quietly away through the gray
drenching blast to the hill back of the town, without being observed.
Night was falling when I set out and it was pitch dark when I reached
the top. The glad, rejoicing storm in glorious voice was singing
through the woods, noble compensation for mere body discomfort. But I
wanted a fire, a big one, to see as well as hear how the storm and
trees were behaving. After long, patient groping I found a little dry
punk in a hollow trunk and carefully stored it beside my matchbox and
an inch or two of candle in an inside pocket that the rain had not yet
reached; then, wiping some dead twigs and whittling them into thin
shavings, stored them with the punk. I then made a little conical bark
hut about a foot high, and, carefully leaning over it and sheltering it
as much as possible from the driving rain, I wiped and stored a lot of
dead twigs, lighted the candle, and set it in the hut, carefully added
pinches of punk and shavings, and at length got a little blaze, by the
light of which I gradually added larger shavings, then twigs all set on
end astride the inner flame, making the little hut higher and wider.
Soon I had light enough to enable me to select the best dead branches
and large sections of bark, which were set on end, gradually increasing
the height and corresponding light of the hut fire. A considerable area
was thus well lighted, from which I gathered abundance of wood, and
kept adding to the fire until it had a strong, hot heart and sent up a
pillar of flame thirty or forty feet high, illuminating a wide circle
in spite of the rain, and casting a red glare into the flying clouds.
Of all the thousands of camp-fires I have elsewhere built none was just
like this one, rejoicing in triumphant strength and beauty in the heart
of the rain-laden gale. It was wonderful,—the illumined rain and clouds
mingled together and the trees glowing against the jet background, the
colors of the mossy, lichened trunks with sparkling streams pouring
down the furrows of the bark, and the gray-bearded old patriarchs
bowing low and chanting in passionate worship!
My fire was in all its glory about midnight, and, having made a bark
shed to shelter me from the rain and partially dry my clothing, I had
nothing to do but look and listen and join the trees in their hymns and
prayers.
Neither the great white heart of the fire nor the quivering
enthusiastic flames shooting aloft like auroral lances could be seen
from the village on account of the trees in front of it and its being
back a little way over the brow of the hill; but the light in the
clouds made a great show, a portentous sign in the stormy heavens
unlike anything ever before seen or heard of in Wrangell. Some wakeful
Indians, happening to see it about midnight, in great alarm aroused the
Collector of Customs and begged him to go to the missionaries and get
them to pray away the frightful omen, and inquired anxiously whether
white men had ever seen anything like that sky-fire, which instead of
being quenched by the rain was burning brighter and brighter. The
Collector said he had heard of such strange fires, and this one he
thought might perhaps be what the white man called a “volcano, or an
_ignis fatuus_.” When Mr. Young was called from his bed to pray, he,
too, confoundedly astonished and at a loss for any sort of explanation,
confessed that he had never seen anything like it in the sky or
anywhere else in such cold wet weather, but that it was probably some
sort of spontaneous combustion “that the white man called St. Elmo’s
fire, or Will-of-the-wisp.” These explanations, though not convincingly
clear, perhaps served to veil their own astonishment and in some
measure to diminish the superstitious fears of the natives; but from
what I heard, the few whites who happened to see the strange light
wondered about as wildly as the Indians.
I have enjoyed thousands of camp-fires in all sorts of weather and
places, warm-hearted, short-flamed, friendly little beauties glowing in
the dark on open spots in high Sierra gardens, daisies and lilies
circled about them, gazing like enchanted children; and large fires in
silver fir forests, with spires of flame towering like the trees about
them, and sending up multitudes of starry sparks to enrich the sky; and
still greater fires on the mountains in winter, changing camp climate
to summer, and making the frosty snow look like beds of white flowers,
and oftentimes mingling their swarms of swift-flying sparks with
falling snow-crystals when the clouds were in bloom. But this Wrangell
camp-fire, my first in Alaska, I shall always remember for its
triumphant storm-defying grandeur, and the wondrous beauty of the
psalm-singing, lichen-painted trees which it brought to light.
[1] Dr. Sheldon Jackson, 1834-1909, became Superintendent of
Presbyterian Missions in Alaska in 1877, and United States General
Agent of Education in 1885. [W. F. B.]
